About to Fall (On The Brink #2)

1. Adrian （Age 16）

For most of my life, princes only existed in fairy tales and Disney movies.

The first time I saw Nicolas Fontaine was at the Canadian Junior Championships in Mississauga, and as much as it pained me, the comparison was unavoidable.

His hair was shinier than a gold medal, the kind of blond that looked lit from within under arena lights. Eyes the clear blue of a cloudless day—wide, doe like, in a face that hadn't lost its softness yet. His lips looked painted on. Even his nose was straight as a skate edge.

His posture was regal—shoulders back, chin lifted, spine so straight he looked like one of those creepy Victorian dolls held up by puppet strings.

He was fourteen years old and there were already whispers of Olympic glory.

I hated him on sight.

Prince Nicky. The perfect skating prince.

It made sense when you knew the lineage.

Nephew of Jean-Pierre Renaud—Olympic gold medallist, three time World Championship coach, the most respected name in Canadian figure skating.

Born into skating royalty with a golden future mapped out before he could walk.

Renaud had broken his own rule for this kid—the man who famously only trained proven skaters had taken his nephew under his wing from day one.

Must be nice.

Not that I had a hard life—let's be clear.

My mother was Julia Jung, born in Seoul, immigrated to Vancouver with ambition and a suitcase.

Beautiful in the way that made people stare and sharp in the way that made them stop.

I got my face from her—the cheekbones, the dark eyes, the bone structure that strangers called striking. What I didn't get was her attention.

My father was Matthew Zhao, and his family had built a commercial real estate empire that sprawled across Hong Kong and Vancouver, the kind of wealth that gets written up in business magazines.

He wasn't cruel. Wasn't neglectful in the traditional sense.

Just absent. Fundamentally incapable of being present even when we occupied the same room.

His solution to everything was a cheque—when I started skating at six, he paid for private coaching and never attended a single lesson. Every problem that could be solved with money was solved with money. Every problem that couldn't was just quietly not addressed.

So I learned to fill the space myself. Clawed my way through junior competitions without a parent in the stands.

Taught myself to read protocols because nobody was going to explain them.

Figured out my own travel, nutrition, pre-competition routine—all assembled through trial and error and the particular resourcefulness of a kid who understood early that the cavalry wasn't coming.

The rebellion started at thirteen. Electric blue hair from a box at Shoppers Drug Mart.

Letting my idiot best friend pierce my nose in his bedroom at fourteen with a questionably sanitized safety pin.

First tattoo at sixteen—a line of script along my inner forearm, done at a shop in East Van that didn't ask questions if you paid in cash.

Each one was met with the same response.

A slight downturn of my mother's lips. A raised eyebrow from my father.

He'll grow out of it. The hair, the piercings, the ink—all filed under the same assumption that governed everything about me.

Adrian's little rebellion. Adrian's little hobby.

He would give it all up eventually. Take his place in the family business the way every Zhao had before me.

They never said it outright. They didn't need to. It was in the way my dad talked about the future—always when you're ready, never if. Not that anybody ever bothered to ask me what I wanted.

When I came out last year, I thought that might finally get a reaction. Something real. Even anger would have been better than nothing—at least anger meant they cared enough to feel something about who I was.

Instead I got silence. My mother drained her wine glass in one go and said thank you for telling us, Adrian.

My father had nodded once in acknowledgement and excused himself to take a call.

They never brought it up again. Never asked if I was seeing anyone.

Just absorbed it the way they absorbed everything about me that didn't fit the plan—filed under the ever expanding category of things Adrian would eventually grow out of.

My father pulled back even further after that. Not that we had been close before. Fewer dinners. Fewer questions about school. The cheques kept coming but the already threadbare pretence of interest wore through entirely. I became someone he funded rather than someone he fathered.

So when I stood at the boards in Mississauga and watched Prince Nicky glide onto the ice—pristine costume, golden hair, perfect posture, famous uncle watching from the coaches' area—I felt something hot and ugly curl in my chest.

It wasn't just jealousy. Jealousy was simple, clean, easy to understand. This was something messier. Nicolas Fontaine was perfect and loved and adored, and the commentators couldn't shut up about him—generational talent, they said. Once in a decade.

Funny. I was pretty sure the decade had room for one more. And I intended to make it very difficult to forget my name while they were busy engraving his.

I used it. That hot, ugly feeling. Let it fuel every crossover, every edge, every rotation. When I launched into my quad loop, it was explosive—all that anger converted into height and speed and a landing so clean it surprised even me.

I won that competition. Beat him by 13 points, which was significant at the junior level.

He came second. At his first Junior Championships.

At fourteen years old. Which—and I would have died before admitting this to anyone, least of all him—was genuinely impressive.

Most skaters were happy to crack the top ten in their first appearance at that level.

Nicky had waltzed in and landed on the podium on his first try.

He took it gracefully. Smiled on the podium like he'd just won. Shook my hand with what appeared to be genuine warmth and said, “Great skate. Your quad loop was perfection.”

“Yeah, it was,” I said. “You did pretty good too... for second place. I would say better luck next time but I'll be competing in seniors next year.”

His smile faltered. Just for a second—a hairline fracture in all that golden composure. His hand tightened around mine, grip going from polite to something with actual pressure behind it. Those clear blue eyes went a shade colder, the warmth draining out like I'd flipped a switch.

“Congratulations,” he said and this time the word had edges.

There it was. The crack in the perfect prince facade.

The ugly thing in my chest purred.

He pulled his hand back and turned to face the cameras, smile back in place, posture impeccable.

But I'd seen it. That flicker of something real underneath—anger, maybe, or wounded pride, or just the basic human reaction of fuck you that anyone would have when some asshole deliberately twisted the knife.

I'd gotten under his skin.

And I wanted to do it again.

I went back to Vancouver with a gold medal and showed it to my father over dinner three days later.

“That's great, Adrian,” he said, without looking up from his phone.

Cool. Fine. Whatever. I put it on my dresser next to the others and told myself I didn't need anyone to make exceptions for me or break their precious rules to let me in.

I would make myself impossible to ignore instead.